This description relates to a heater unit and an electric cooker equipped therewith, and more particularly to a heater unit and an electric cooker equipped therewith configured for improving a heating efficiency and capable of selectively adopting a heat source as well.
The typical cooker is designed to easily cook food using gas or electricity, and an electric cooker heated by application of electric source has gained in popularity and use.
Particularly, researches are well under way for induction heating used as a major heating source of an electric cooker such as a cooker hob or a cook-top. An electric cooker of induction heating method is such that a high frequency flux is generated if a high frequency current is made to flow in an induction heating coil disposed at a bottom surface of a heating plate, and eddy currents are generated in a cooking vessel disposed on the heating plate by electromagnetic induction of high frequency flux. The cooking vessel is thus heated by generation of Joule heat with regard to resistance components thereof.
The electric cooker thus explained has an advantage of an excellent heating efficiency while it has a disadvantage in that only the cooking vessel of magnetic attribute is heated.
Researches are being vigorously conducted recently to overcome the disadvantage of the cooking vessel, and as a result, induction heated electric cookers have been developed for heating cooking vessels of magnetic attribute and cooking vessels of non-magnetic attribute as well. However, it is necessary to increase an operation frequency of the non-magnetic electric cooker, or to increase the current and the number of turns of induction heating coils for the non-magnetic cooking vessel, for achievement of the same heating effect as that of the magnetic cooking vessels, because of less magnetic permeability than that of the magnetic cooker.
There is a disadvantage in the electric cooker thus mentioned in that configuration tends to be relatively complicated due to involvement with a heater and an inverter for heating the non-magnetic cooking vessel, entailing more economic burden resulting therefrom. This results in decrease in assembling efficiency of electric cookers and increase in unit price of the product.
There is further disadvantage in that non-magnetic cooking vessels made of such material, for example, ceramic or glass, are hard to be applied with aforementioned techniques although the improvement can be applied to magnetic/non-magnetic metal cooking vessels.